RUSSIAN DIVISION REPORTED TO BE SURROUNDED

Wairarapa Times-Age, 13 January 1940, Page 5

RUSSIAN DIVISION REPORTED TO BE SURROUNDED

Provisions Dropped by Planes SOVIET CALLING UP ADDITIONAL MEN DRASTIC ARMY REORGANISATION SAID TO BE IN PROGRESS (By Telegraph.—Press Association—Copyright.) Reports of fighting in Finland are meagre, states a Dayentry broadcast. Some messages speak of heavy fighting in the Salla region and a Russian division is said to be surrounded. Russian planes have been seen diving and dropping provisions fo? troops in this area and this seems to confirm reports that the troops are cut off. Soviet planes raided a port near Helsinki. Twenty planes participated and one is said to have been brought down by anti-aircraft, fire.

The Russian division at Salla has made several new attempts to break through the Finnish lines but without success. Russia is calling up more men in an effort to crush the Finnish resistance. Notices-have been, posted in the streets oi Moscow telling the men in the 19'21 and the 1926 classes to register at recruiting centres. A Finnish army’ officer estimates that Russia, has already lost 50,000 men, 200.000 wounded, and .10,000 captured since the Finland campaign began. These losses include the two big defeats suffered by’ the Russians at Suomussalmi. Reports from Copenhagen and other Scandinavian sources, so far unconfirmed, suggest that the Russian forces in Finland are being' drastically reorganised, and that there have been many 7 arrests.

One message says that M. Stalin himself is taking a hand, and is directing operations by long-distance telephone.